MSNBC has been covering President Obama’s White House Summit on Working Families intently thus far today, and the trend continued on the June 23 edition of Andrea Mitchell Reports. Guest host Peter Alexander brought on Charmaine Givens-Thomas to discuss her efforts in petitioning President Obama to set up a meeting with Wal-Mart workers to highlight low wages, inequality, and the lack of recovery for workers following the Great Recession.
Suffice it to say, Ms. Givens-Thomas, a Wal-Mart employee herself, made some truly bizarre arguments in support of her cause, like seeming to place blame on Wal-Mart for the pregnancies of their workers [MP3 audio here; video below]:
Wal-Mart
By Connor Williams | June 23, 2014 | 4:30 PM EDT
Former NYT Reporter: GOP 'Working To Make Life Miserable For Millions' by Fighting Obama-care, Minimum Wage
By Clay Waters | June 22, 2014 | 8:47 AM EDT Timothy Egan, the liberal New York Times reporter turned ultra-liberal columnist, flashed hostility to Wal-Mart (and capitalism in general), as well as a broad ignorance of economics in his latest Sunday Review column, "Corporate Daddy."
For some time now, Republicans in Congress have given up the pretense of doing anything to improve the lot of most Americans. Raising the minimum wage? They won’t even allow a vote to happen. Cleaner air for all? They may partially shut down the government in a coming fight on behalf of major polluters. Add to that the continuing obstruction of student loan relief efforts, and numerous attempts to defund health care, and you have a party actively working to make life miserable for millions.
By Nathan Roush | July 12, 2013 | 4:36 PM EDT
On the Wednesday night edition of All In, host Christ Hayes devoted a segment to discussing the contention in our nation’s capital the introduction of Wal-Mart stores into the District. Basically, the new law would force the discount retailer to pay its employees at least $12.50 an hour in each of its proposed six new stores in the city limits.
Hayes tried to argue that instead of opposing the new legislative measures because of the economic hardships it would create, Wal-Mart was only averse to the new requirement so it could show a “raw assertion of power.” He claimed that the store wanted to be able to “pay their workers whatever they want and dare anyone to tell them otherwise.”
By Mike Ciandella | December 19, 2012 | 1:40 PM EST
When University of California at Santa Barbara professor Nelson Lichtenstein came onto CNBC to discuss bribery allegations against Wal-Mart De Mexico (a subsidiary of Wal-Mart), he got more than he bargained for.
Kenneth Langone, an investor who helped found Home Depot, had joined Maria Bartiromo for the full hour of “Closing Bell” on Dec. 18. Langone, who is also the CEO of Geeknet and has a net worth of $1.6 billion, challenged Lichtenstein fiercely, demanding to hear facts from him. When he found out the news source Lichtenstein was citing as proof, Langone took a jab at The New York Times as well.
Lichtenstein argued that the accusations against Wal-Mart were just the “tip of the iceberg” of a “larger pattern for the company” of the company moving into an area of finding local ways of doing things and imposing “its own business model, regardless, on these countries and on the communities there.” (See CNBC video)